The Meta-Problem in Action

The easiest way to start using the meta-problem in your daily life is to test your understanding on a problem you care about. Say you have been working on something a while and you notice one of the following flaws about your current approach:

• You settled on a problem, maybe even started to solve it. However, it seems to be missing some things, and you are not sure what.

• You settled on a problem, started to solve it, but implementing the solution is going worse than you expected.

• You have a situation you are trying to improve, and you aren’t quite sure where to start.

• There are a group of people with opinions who fundamentally disagree on what the problem or solution should be.

Once you know the situation you want to work with, there are a few lines of inquiry you can start down. I’ll share the kinds of questions I ask my clients, the kinds of insights I am looking for, and how I assess if I should switch to a different topic.

Value

I always start by asking about the goals. “What are you trying to change with this project? Why do you think this will help you improve that outcome? What other things are not in scope but are related?”

This line of inquiry is all about evaluating the official goals, how they relate to the project, how well the two seem to match, and where there may be gaps between what you say you want and what you seem to be focused on to achieve them.

There is always some area of opportunity in this line of discussion because scope (the project) exists to limit a project in ways we may later want to change. There is often a ton of opportunity in this line of discussion because I take a wider view of relevant information than most people.

If you feel you have a good handle on the goals and the project you have chosen really is covering the right subset, it’s time to check the other categories.

Effort

The two sides of the balance to ROI are Return (Value) and the Investment (Effort). So, my next line of questions focuses on the effort side. “What are you trying to do? What methods have you considered? Why did you pick the current one?”

This line of inquiry is about understanding if there is a plan for how to improve the goals, what that plan looks like if it exists, and generally what my client sees as the tools available to address their goals.

Depending on your role in the project, this can help you reassess your approach. Especially if you have discovered something new as you drilled into the goals, there is often an opportunity here to tweak your methods. Even if nothing has changed on your goals, I especially find that when challenged people may decide an easier or harder solution is actually going to hit the sweet spot for ROI because the easier solution achieves the 80-20 rule or the harder solution is going to be much more valuable.

Expertise

The last topic focuses on having the right expertise to plan and execute on the project. My line of questioning here often relies on gaps I have noticed through my knowledge based on earlier discussion. It’s a little hard to give specifics, but I have asked things like “Do you have a data team? Are you handling X decision, or is someone else the expert in that?”

The questions will be very custom to the situation, but effectively we want to investigate together if someone on the team has expertise in the methods you need. One step further, I like to try to get a handle on how those folks with expertise have assessed the value and effort balance of the path they are on.

Most people are not used to solving the meta-problem of choosing the best problem to solve. Even the experts on the team have not carefully evaluated those tradeoffs and are executing on what they think the requirements are instead of what they think they should be.

Conclusion

Investigating the above three key areas allows you to assess if there is some major or minor way that you are solving the wrong problem. Whether the value or effort are off, or you just have some holes in the team, you can identify the gap for further review and action.